My family which includes an 8 y/o and a 5 y/o (very early reader) enjoys regular family game nights. Our 5 year old adapts easily to games that you would otherwise think would be outside of her abilities. It's time for some new games. What are your family's favorites?
NOTE: We have the following games plus various card games (Go Fish, Memory, Crazy Eights etc)
Apples to Apples Jr
Bananagrams
Buckaroo
Big Boogle
Cariboo
Chutes and Ladders
Connect O Round by Cranium
Gnip Gnop
Hullabaloo
Hungry, Hungry Hippos
Jenga
Ker Plunk
Littlest Pet Shop
Mille Bornes
Monopoly
Operation
Pictureka
Pretty, Pretty Princess
Racko
Scrabble
Scrabble Slam
Slamwich
Taboo
Trouble
Twister
Uno
Zingo
My 8 and 6 year olds love to play Rummikub. They also like Connect4 but of course only 2 can play at a time. A lot of times we just make a game of charades on our own.
My son loves to play 20 questions. The rules are open to any character, alive, dead, cartoon, pet, family member, neighbor, friend and it can be such a blast to play. Sponge Bob was the one that stumped me, big time!
Games by "Think Fun" are really great... and we have lots of them ourselves... even my 3 year old loves it even if it is geared for older kids/adults.
Barnes & Noble carries it and probably Amazon.
"Go" is also fun... and can be adapted for kids.
backgammon also is great fun... both my kids and us love to play it together... we have more than one board.
And then there is Charades which does not require you to buy anything.
and Pictionary.
And Bingo! Very fun!
One person starts a story "and then..." next person adds on to the story, and so on and so on. Love doing that one in front of a fire roasting smores. Also, good ole charades. Love games! Great ideas: )
We just got In A Pickle. Great game! Also, Would You Rather is great. My son asks me to carry the cards in my purse for Would You Rather, in case we get stuck waiting somewhere....we pull them out and play!
I am so happy to hear that you and your family love games and have family game nights. I gew up playing games and have continued the tradtion with my family. We love card games as well as strategy games. One your family would love is called Walk the Dogs by SimplyFun. Parenting magazine called this game the best all round family game. SimplyFun has a number of others you would love as well.
Definitely get CLUE! They have 2 new versions. Check them out onine. One has really good reveiews (we've played it and it's great) and the other one has mostly bad reviews. I can't remember which is which though.... The GOOD one has a pool in the middle and clock and special power cards......
Sorry was fun too.
Get SEQUENCE too! You can play in teams of 2. Pretty easy to catch on to.
And finally, BLOCKUS. Another really good game. A 5 year old should be able to play fairly easily (she just probably won't have the strategy down right away.) This is a 4 player game.
My 2 boys are about the same ages as your kids. We just got Sorry Sliders and it is alot of fun ! Much more fun than regular Sorry. And there is 4 different ways to play. Dominos is another one we just got. I wasn't sure how that would go but it was fun. We still have some learning to do on that one. I looked at Blokus (another mom recommended this one) and it looks like fun. I think that's going to be the next one I get.
Okay, here goes, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We usually have an evening called Family Home Evening. It is very similar to your game night but we also incorporate a scriptural lesson and prayer, music, cooking (baking), doing a service for a nieghbor or someone that has a need, like mowing a yard for a handicapped person, we focus on the family doing things together. I am going to add some links here and please just look at the content even if you don't thing my chuch is a good one. They are very good suggestions for any family. I searched "ideas for family home evening" and these are just a few I thought were easy to navigate. You could also search out ideas for "family game night".
This is at about.com and I clicked on some of the links and they are basic concepts that any family could tweek to fit their beliefs and could be changed to non religious ideas. Such as Lego Scriptionary...you could have everyone build a vehicle they would like to own when they grow up, for all we know they might build an F-16. http://lds.about.com/od/familyhomeeveninggames/Family_Home_Evening_Games.htm
My kids loved 13 dead end drive. It is good for 4 or more players. although we have played it with as few as 2 players and as many as 6 The 8 year old will have no problem with it you may have to help the 5 year old the first couple times. We pulled it out recently to play with our grandchildren. they loved it. You can get it at toys r us. scattergories is also great. sequence is good and they make a sequence state capitals which is good for learning the state capitals. good luck